King Midas Sound and Fennesz announce collaborative album, Edition 1

Kevin Martin has always been a collaborator, and that’s not going to stop any time soon.

The next step for King Midas Sound, the extreme lovers rock group made up by Martin, Roger Robinson and Kiki Hitomi, is a series of collaborative records. Titled Editions 1-4, each record will see King Midas Sound collaborate with a different artist, released through Ninja Tune. The first of these will be released on September 18, and the collaborator is both a surprise and someone who makes total sense: Austrian guitarist and sound artist Christian Fennesz.

Since 2001’s breakthrough album Endless Summer, Fennesz has been drawing gut-wrenching levels of emotion out of a guitar and feedback, both on his albums and with his live shows – which bear more than a few similarities to King Midas Sound’s. On Edition 1, the group used “guitar tracks, samples, and unreleased material from Fennesz’s archive” to “create a record focused on kaleidoscopic sonic beauty, bathed in the bluest emotional lyricism.”

Martin and Fennesz opened up about the album in a Twitter conversation with The Quietusearlier today, with Martin explaining that Robinson and him were inspired by the way that jazz players collaborated in the 60s. They “knew [that Fennesz] operated on our wavelength”, says Martin, “but with different tools.” Scroll down the Bug’s feed for the full conversation.

King Midas Sound and Fennesz will also take their collaboration to the stage, starting with European dates this autumn. We’re streaming the first taste of the album, ‘Waves’, below. Scroll past that for the artwork and full tracklist.